How To Add The Perfect Background To Your Email Newsletter

What’s the most easily overlooked element of an email newsletter? Unsurprisingly, it’s the background, which gets easily lost behind the main stars of the show, such as the Call To Action (CTA) or the punchy first paragraph. An attractive background image will transform your newsletter, making it more eye-catching while allowing you to overlay content and integrate more effective, visually engaging Calls to Action (CTAs) in your communications.

Here at beehiiv, we’re here to help you implement background images effectively in your marketing strategy. Keep reading to find out all there is to know about background images in email marketing–and why they’re more important than you’d think!

Email Newsletter Background Image (Why Do They Matter?)

So you’ve started creating your email newsletter–why should you consider using a background image? Well, if you want to engage your readers, background images can have subtle, but powerful effects.

Using a high-quality background image will make your newsletter:

More Eye Catching

There’s no doubt about it–background images on email newsletters are more eye-catching than a boring white background.

You can use color or animation to catch subscribers’ attention and keep them reading your newsletter rather than navigating back to their inbox.

Visually Textured

Using a background image to create layers in your emails will provide texture, and make your emails more interesting. You could overlay CTA buttons or text over top of your background image, or have a seasonal background image with elements on top.

Creating layers and texture in your emails will improve the visual effect and allow you to implement better CTAs and content for your subscribers. Done well, it can also improve readability.

More Professional

It’s undeniable that emails with beautiful backgrounds look far more professional than those without them.

You don’t need to be an email expert to create a professional-looking email if you have a range of beautiful background images in your wheelhouse. Your email newsletter will look more slick and will show that you clearly care about how your subscribers perceive your brand. Background images are available from a range of websites including Freepik, Shutterstock and Campaign Monitor.

Background Image Email Newsletter (Getting Started)

So how do you get started with a background image for your next email newsletter? The best place to start is by researching some brands and going through your own emails to see how other companies have implemented background images.

There are so many ways you can do this– for example, choose one of your brand colors that will dictate how your background image will look, and keep this consistent across all of your newsletters. Or, choose seasonal backgrounds that will change depending on the holiday.

You could even use animated GIFs to make your emails look more interactive. Whatever you choose as inspiration for your background images, make sure they have a purpose and don’t detract from the main CTAs/focus of your newsletter.

Long Email Newsletter Background Image (Writing HTML Code)

If you’re planning to write your own HTML code for your email background image, there are some important aspects you’ll need to bear in mind.

Tables

Using tables when writing in HTML code is the way in which you lay out the data for your background. This will consist of columns and rows, and it dictates how the content will be displayed.

Here’s an example of how table HTML can look, showing the width, style, and padding relevant to the email. You could also add a background default color that would show in case any images fail to populate.

<table role="presentation" width="860" style="width:860px;" cellpadding="25" cellspacing="60" border="5" align="left"></table>

Attributes

Attributes in HTML are additional pieces of information that dictate how the content will appear in your email. This could include how you wish to align your background. For example:

Alternatively, if you already have an image in mind that you’d like to use as your email background, you could add the link to your HTML like this:

www.imagelink.com”>

Style is another important attribute to consider, which is used to decide details of an email background such as color. Here’s an example of how you’d use style to implement a block of powder blue color for the background of an email:

Size

You need to bear in mind size when implementing a background image using HTML. Size is used to decide the height and width of an image, as well as the position it holds in the email.

You can also decide if you’d like your image to repeat when writing a longer email. The following code dictates that the background image will repeat vertically until the parent element is completely populated:

Here are some other examples of size elements that can be used in HTML:

  (Keep Background Contained to Original Size)

<img src="link" alt="example text" width="800" height="600"> (Restrict Image To Specific Size)

Using HTML coding for a long email newsletter background image should be easier now–but for more tips and tricks on sizing in email newsletters, check out our blog! You can also test out your HTML code using W3Schools so you can see how it will look in your next email.

Email Newsletter Background Image Size (Using a Platform)

When using a platform to implement a background image, you’ll need to carefully consider the size of the background image you’re going to use. If an image is too big, it may not load, leaving your email looking bare and bland. If the image is too small, on the other hand, it may look stretched or pixelated when trying to fit the size of the column in your email. Plus, email newsletter background image size is a big factor in deliverability.

It’s always worth including a default background color on your emails just in case an image fails to load. This ensures that your email background won’t default to white if the image doesn’t appear. Some users don’t automatically download images via emails, so a background color is useful in ensuring all subscribers see an eye-catching background.

For more tips on improving the aesthetics of your email newsletter, there are plenty of ideas and tricks on our blog.

Summing Up - How beehiiv Can Help

This guide should help you to create your first email newsletter background image! We hope we’ve helped you to make it eye-catching and engaging for your subscriber base.

To start embedding your email background image, get started with beehiiv today for free! With our different plans, you can get stuck into a wide range of benefits including custom HTML, Dynamic RSS feeds, and custom fields.

Check out our pricing page on our website to see all the features of our different plans - we can’t wait to see what email backgrounds you come up with!